Sport At Its Best

This is an e-mail I got recently from a reader who thought this story exemplified Sport At Its Best.  I agree – this is an amazing story.  Thanks for the heads up Andy.

*****

Sarah Stevenson is a British TaeKwonDo athlete that I have been following for a while.  She is already a 3 time Olympian (2000, 2004, 2008), having won bronze in Beijing.  As a Brit, there’s obviously a ton of pressure on her for the upcoming 2012 games.  In TaeKwonDo, World Championships is a much tougher tournament than the Olympics, as the field is much larger.  To compete in Korea, home of the sport and where TaeKwonDo is as part of their sporting fabric as hockey is in Canada, just adds to the difficulty in medalling.

Earlier this year, Sarah had to cease her training/competing to care for her terminally ill parents. Her mother has terminal cancer and her father has a brain tumour.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/taekwondo/13155175.stm

In spite of the emotional upheaval and the interference to her preparation, Sarah became World Champion this morning, citing her family as inspiration for her to persevere and battle on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/taekwondo/13264914.stm
http://www.sportinglife.com/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=others/11/05/03/manual_095114.html

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There’s a part of Andre Agassi’s book Open that I read recently in which he talks about winning his first Major.  Prior to that he had been in a number of finals without winning and had really taken a beating in the press for being too much about image and not having what it takes to be the best.  When it finally happened for him, it seemed like the press did an abrupt about-face and instantly he could do no wrong in terms of what they wrote about him.

Knowing that nothing had really changed and he was the same person he was prior to winning a Major, and having everything seem so different in terms of how people related to him, the whole experience really opened his eyes.

“I’m supposed to be a different person now that I’ve won a slam.  Everyone says so.  After two years of calling me a fraud, a choke artist, a rebel without a cause, they lionize me.  They declare that I’m a winner, a player of substance, the real deal.  They say my victory at Wimbledon forces them to reassess me to reconsider who I really am.

“But I don’t feel that Wimbledon has changed me.  I feel, in fact, as if I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing.”

Imagine what that would be like.  You wake up one day and everyone treats you differently.  Better, in fact, and you’re exactly the same person.  The only thing that Agassi did differently was score a few more points because it was his opponent that made the mistakes at the wrong times.  Knowing that it could have gone either way when he won and when he lost and having everyone act like he was a different person gave him a really interesting and unique perspective about winning and losing.

He goes on to say that he felt bad after losing, a lot longer than he felt good after winning.  It’s almost as if winning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Because it’s something that athletes dream about their whole lives, it’s very difficult for the experience, if it does come at all, to live up to what you dreamed it would be.  That’s why I believe that at the highest level, very successful athletes are more about the challenge than the actual victory.  In other words, the greatest fulfillment comes from the journey rather than the destination.  So strive for the top, absolutely.  Dream about it, do what it takes, work hard on improving mentally and physically but also realize that trying to improve and trying to be the best is every bit as important and enjoyable as it is getting there.

Dream about it, do what it takes, work hard on improving mentally and physically but also realize that trying to improve and trying to be the best is every bit as important and enjoyable as it is getting there.

And check out Open whether you’re a tennis fan or not.  It’s a great read.

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Sport is about the challenge.  My all-time favorite quote in terms of creating a mindset for me in my athletic career was from iconic Olympic rower, Marnie McBean:

“My impression of Olympic gold medalists plummeted when I won one myself.”

The point is that Marnie, before she won her first gold, assumed that it was some kind of super-human feat or that the winner had some kind of incredible talent or knowledge that everyone else didn’t.  Essentially, the experience proved to her that the assumption was incorrect.  Certainly a number of factors have to align, and for me luck played a significant role at many times in my journey, but it’s not impossible and it’s certainly not super-human.  To quote Marnie again, it’s just “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

The whole experience has left me with the realization that the people most worth our admiration may or may not be champions at what they do.  One of the premises of this blog is the fact that positive attitudes and certain values contribute to success in sport (and in life for that matter) but obviously there are many athletes (and people) for whom I have a great deal of respect who have never won an Olympic medal.

“We are too much in awe of people who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.” Malcolm Gladwell

Max Thompson was a nordic combined skier for Canada at the Torino Games and like me was staying in the Olympic village in Sestriere.  I had seen Max around the athlete’s lounge watching other athletes compete but the first time I ever had a conversation with him was in the dining hall a few days after my race.  I was sitting with my teammate Paul Boehme and the Australian skeleton coach, a retired American slider by the name of Terry Holland, as well as a few hundred other athletes and coaches from numerous countries.  Max walked over to us, put his hand up to give me a high five and said “Hey man, I just saw your bio.  Fire fighter, gold medal, senior citizen, all right!”  There was definitely a part of me that thought, am I giving a high five to someone who just called me a senior citizen? But I couldn’t help but immediately like him.  Think about what kind of 21 year-old you’d have to walk up to a complete stranger in front of his friends and say that!

Several days later, on the night of the closing ceremonies, I ran into Max again and at the time he was looking for someone.  He mentioned that he had to find a nordic combined official from another country to give her his Olympic team jacket.  Surprised that someone in his position would be trying to give away such a prized possession, I asked him why and he said that he had been relying on this person for the past season to transport his ski jumping skis from competition to competition because he couldn’t afford the extra baggage charges.  He wanted to show his gratitude.

That was a bit of an eye-opener for me in that we often complain about the fact that there are countries in the world that fund sport to a larger extent than Canada.  Perhaps I’m biased but I strongly believe that we’d be better off as a nation if we did invest more in sport.  There was a campaign recently asking that the federal government increase the budget for sport to just 1% of the budget for health care.  To my way of thinking, sport is an extremely effective method of preventative health care – we support sport, our athletes succeed, more and more kids are inspired to participate and follow in their footsteps and we as a nation become healthier.

I’ve certainly complained about a lack of funding more than once but in reality, at least in Torino, I was in a position of not being able to think of anything that I wish I had but couldn’t afford that would have made my preparation better for the Games.  And in contrast here was a guy who was a member of the same Olympic team as I, who was a skier who couldn’t afford to travel with skis!  If my skeleton career had been like that, I don’t know that I would have stuck with it long enough to succeed at a World level.  Because of that, I admire Max and what he’s had to endure and the type of character he obviously has to have made it to the level he did.  Would I admire him more if he had won an Olympic medal?  I don’t think so.

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“You know, winning a world title is not that important in life.”

Kelly Slater, 9 Time World Champion Surfer

Lauryn Williams, an American sprinter, finished 2^nd in the 100 meters at the Athens Olympics in 2004.  She followed that up with a gold in the same event at the World Championships the following year and a silver medal in 2007.  As one could imagine, expectations were high going into the Beijing Olympics in the summer of ‘08 but as fate would have it, Lauryn finished 4^th.

First, I should point out that it’s almost universally agreed upon amongst athletes that 4^th is the worst place to finish in any major competition – to be the top finishing competitor not to win a medal is a tough spot to be in.  It’s almost better to do worse so as not to have to play back all of the mistakes that could have made what is often a tiny difference between winning a medal and not.

I saw an interview with the sprinter last summer and in it she described the funk she was in after the race.  I don’t remember the interview well enough to quote her word for word but the point was essentially this: she was reliving the race and wallowing in the result over and over again for a long period of time…  and then her father died.

It was really powerful to hear her describe how immediately the race became nothing more than an 11 second segment of her life.  “It’s just 11 seconds.”

It was an extremely harsh reminder of the role sport plays in our world.  It’s exciting, it’s challenging, huge amounts of time, money, blood, sweat and tears are invested and yet at the end of the day – it is just sport.  Ultimately, I believe people at both ends of the spectrum come to the same realization.  Those who fail to meet their expectations, as high as they may be like Lauryn Williams in Beijing, suffer a terrible heartbreak but ultimately realize it’s just sport and life goes on.

Perhaps what’s less obvious is that those who are lucky enough to achieve their dream performance also reach the same conclusion.  Whether an Olympic medal actually translates into fame and fortune or does not (and in the vast majority of cases it does not), you quickly realize that you’re no different.  The things that were really important to you in your life prior to the achievement are still the same things after.

“It’s just 11 seconds.”

And for me here’s the crux of the argument – because it is just sport, ultimately the result is less important than how you make it happen.  Whatever it takes to make your dream a reality, do it in a manner in which you can be proud of.  Do you think Lauren Williams’ Dad is proud of her even though she finished 4^th in Beijing?  Yes!  Maybe the race didn’t go exactly how she hoped it would but if she gave it her best shot – that in itself is more significant than a result, especially in an event as highly contested as the 100 meters.

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